After a canceled edition and a following amputated, the Festival international de musique contemporaine de Victoriaville found its tunes, its public and its international guests, for a 38th edition which will end on Sunday evening. The only false note was the last-minute withdrawal of the Ukrainian orchestra Dakh Daughters, whose concert had been scheduled for the opening last Thursday, then moved to Friday, and finally canceled.
“One of the artists in the group had problems with obtaining her visa,” said the To have to Jordie Vézina Levasseur, Communications Director of FIMAV. “At the same time, the health problems of a loved one have added pressure on the musician, and that’s not to mention the worry about the war at home. We had to come to the conclusion that we had to cancel the concert”, she says, adding that it is only a postponement… for a third time: “They were on the poster for the 2020 edition which was canceled due to the pandemic, we were hoping to receive them in 2021 as well. A parallel project to that of the Daughters, DakhaBrakha, is scheduled to perform at the Festival d’été de Québec on July 15.
Friend of the festival, the composer, improviser and free-jazz double bass player William Parker replaced the female orchestra at short notice, to the delight of festival regulars, who do not deplore any other cancellations. The festival ticket office, on the other hand, will still show the repercussions of the pandemic, confirms Vézina Levasseur.
“When we put the festival passports on sale, we were already anticipating a drop in attendance of about 25% due to the pandemic and the difficulties of traveling that come with it, and that’s what we feel. – both international and Canadian spectators. The FIMAV thus plans to reach more than 3,000 paying spectators, and more than 12,000 visitors to the circuit of sound installations in downtown Victoriaville.
Make way for music
“We’re not used to midnight concerts anymore, huh?” “, launched Michel Levasseur, director and founder of the festival, when presenting the performance of the Mopcut trio in the smaller of the two rooms of the Colosseum. Last year, FIMAV cobbled together a slimming edition with musicians from the Quebec scene. “The last concert of the day started at 7:30 p.m.; at 9:30 p.m. maximum, everyone fled to their homes before the curfew fell… ”
Nobody wanted to leave the captivating performance of this trio which, on paper, promised to be more brutal than what we heard and greatly appreciated. Certainly capable of getting carried away, we will especially retain the more atmospheric passages, meticulously executed, of the trio composed of singer Audrey Chen, electric guitarist Julien Desprez and drummer Luka König.
Everyone, in their own way, uses synthesizers or effects pedals; Chen has a voice with a thousand personalities, sometimes melodious, more often threatening. Desprez extracts astonishing sonorities from his instrument, contenting himself less with playing notes than with superimposing layers of sounds, reminiscent of the textural work of a Christian Fennesz. The most spectacular remains König, who often plays with one hand, the second being used to manipulate his synthesizer in real time. During a first improvisation of about forty minutes, Mopcut transported the audience to Victo.
At 10 p.m., in the great hall of the Colosseum, composer and guitarist René Lussier presented, with his orchestra, the creation of Au diable vert, a new eight-movement work composed during the pandemic. Pure Lussier, playful and rigorous, a synthesis of his musical loves, for free-jazz, rock, Eastern European music, children’s music, right in the heart of the performance, one would have thought that he spent his confinement listening to old episodes of The Simpsons as one of his compositions seemed to reinterpret the theme after having put his notes in disorder.
The beauty of Au diable vert relied heavily on the composition of the orchestra. Accordion (Luzio Altobelli), brass section (with Julie Houle on tuba), marimba (Marton Maderspach, who also assisted Robbie Kuster on drums), violin (Alissa Cheung from Quatuor Bozzini) and of course Lussier on guitars. Brilliant timbres, contrasting colors which accurately express the dynamic score of the veteran who, Michel Levasseur was pleased to recall at the curtain raiser, was from the very first edition of FIMAV.
A completely different atmosphere at the start of the evening at Carré 150 with the Pavees Dance quartet led by composer, drummer, singer and entertainer Sean Noonan. A jazz-rock often very heavy and with intriguing harmonies, not necessarily original in this fairly fluid genre, but delivered by expert musicians: Jamaaladeen Tacuma on bass (collaborator of Ornette Coleman, to name only him), guitarist electric Ava Mendoza – stunning! — and none other than Malcom Mooney, original singer of the kosmiche rock group CAN who, past his 75th birthday, still has a spirited voice. Noonan plays the drums as much as the conductor, deliberately sings out of tune and makes jokes throughout this concert which demolished the austere image that the general public could have of contemporary music.
The 38th edition of FIMAV continues tonight and tomorrow with the expected performance of American composer and guitarist Mary Halvorson and the two concerts featuring Swedish saxophonist and composer Mats Gustafsson, a first time this evening in trio with David Grubbs (guitar ) and Rob Mazurek (trumpet, synthesizers), then on Sunday in a duet with another saxophone athlete, Colin Stetson.